Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
Apollo
Seraphina tossed and turned more than usual last night. I did my best to soothe her, but I know the stress of today is a lot for her. She even shifted sometime during the night. Luckily her snake didn’t bite me…I mean nibble.
“I feel like I didn’t sleep.” She sighs as we lay in bed.
“After today you’ll feel better. The stress of everything will hopefully start to get better for you. I hate that I can’t fix this for you.”
“You’ve done so much for me already. Because of you, I’m going to be able to avenge my family. You don’t know how much that means to me. And now my brothers and I have a home. That’s something none of us thought would happen.”
“You know that even if you weren’t my mate, you’d all have in Lake Renegade. And I would’ve chosen you. I know that with every beat of my heart.”
“I would’ve chosen you too. And I’m sorry I got jealous the other night at the restaurant.”
“Don’t ever be sorry. If it was me? I wouldn’t have been so quiet, I probably would’ve punched the guy out.”
Seraphina laughs. “I wanted to punch her, my snake suggested we bite her. Non-lethal of course…”
I laugh. “I love you and your snake.”
“I wonder if we can find out what they did with my parents and the twins bodies. Do you think they’d keep records for all of that?”
“They might. Whichever group gets the office area knows to grab everything they can. We will see what we can find out about your family.”
“Thank you.” She says softly.
We get up and start getting ready, I can hear everyone moving around in their rooms.
“We’re having breakfast first, right?” Adonis asks as he barges through our room.
“Did you forget how to knock? What if we were naked?” I punch my brother in the arm.
“Ow. That’s my pastry eating arm.” He frowns as he punches me back.
“Did someone say pastry?” Ares asks as he and Sakura come in.
“Why is everyone in our room?” I squint at my brothers.
“Because your room in between us and the rest of the family you dumbass.” Ares laughs.
“There’s front doors, asshole.”
“Really? First thing in the morning? I never really realized how quiet it’s gotten at home with only two of you living there.” Baba sighs at us as he’s coming through the shared door.
My brothers and I stare at each other and start laughing.
“Come on, baba. You know you miss us.” Ares says as baba is shaking his head no.
“We have time to grab a fast breakfast and then head over to relieve the guys. We need to be ready when Matilda and Paul leave.” Baba says to all of us.
We head down to the restaurant to grab a fast breakfast. I make sure to grab a few extra sandwiches for the guys that have been on watch and one for me later. You never know when you’ll need a pick me up.
“Did I see you put those sandwiches in your pocket again?” Eros asks me.
“Yep. It’s not like I have other options to hold them.”
The tension in the cars is high and I wish there was a way to help relieve some of it. I know we’re all thinking about the last time we raided a facility like this. The only difference is this time we have more information than before. So this time we’re more ready for these assholes.
We meet up at the farmhouse first, Adonis, Valentino, Romano and Celestino will be taking over. The rest of us are raiding the facility. There are 3 ways in and out. So we’re splitting into three teams. The only thing we don’t know is if there are other shifters in the facility.
“We haven’t seen anyone but Matilda and Paul in the house.” Keegan says to us.
I hand him and Gervasio a sandwich. They thank me and start eating.
“You realize he had those sandwiches in his pocket, right?” Eros says to them.
They both look at the semi squished sandwiches and shrug.
“They were wrapped up and in a sealed bag. I think they’re safe.” Gervasio says as he continues to eat.
“I’ve eaten worse things.” Keegan chuckles.
“See? I told you everyone loves pocket sandwiches.” I smile.
We stay there for a few more minutes so that we can make sure they know what we’ll be doing.
Then the rest of us head to the facility.
When we get there, it’s smaller than the one back in Chicago.
Which is a good thing because we don’t really have a good visual for it.
With the other facility, Sakura, Haruki and their parent were able to map out most of the facility.
This time we only knew one area and that makes it harder for us to get in there.
And instead of going in there to rescue people, we’re going in there to get information on what experiments they were doing.
I wish we were going in there to rescue Seraphina’s family.
“Okay, you all know the plan. Don’t take chances if you see people in there, we need to make sure who they are before you shoot.” Baba says.
We all nod as we listen to him. Finally Adonis lets us know that Matilda and Paul are leaving the farmhouse. Romano is staying behind to keep an eye on the house, while the others follow them.
Ten minutes later, we see a car pull up to the gates and head inside. There’s no one in the guard booth, so the gate must be coded. We’ve already set it up so the camera’s that are there will be running on a loop. That will give us enough time to take out the security and get inside.
I go over to Seraphina and hold her.
“Please be careful, we don’t know what weapons they have.” I say softly to her.
“You need to be careful too.”
I lean down and kiss her.
Seraphina
No matter how nervous I am, I’m also ready for this chapter in our lives to be over. To be able to see who took us and killed half my family is closure I wasn’t sure I was going to get.
I go over to Apollo and he holds me for a few minutes. I don’t know what I would do if anything happened to him. We watch the four guards that are there as we wait for Francesco to let us know the feed is looping.
“Okay, Franco said we’re good to go. We have an hour to get in and out of there. Coms only from now on.” Giacomo tells us.
“I love you.” Apollo says as he gives me another kiss.
“I love you.” I say as we head to our groups and head inside.
I look back at him one last time, he’s in Olivers group. While I understand why, I still don’t like that we can’t be in the same group.
My group is headed to the area that we’re taken to for milking.
Oliver’s group will be going towards the apartment we were kept in.
And Archer’s group is headed to the area that we’ve never seen.
But it looks like two apartments. The blueprints showed there were four apartments, two on each side of the building.
We never saw the door to another apartment on our side, but it was there in the blueprints.
All four of the guards were taken down and we all head inside. As we get closer to the milking rooms, we can hear voices.
“Why isn’t the venom killing the mice?” one of the people yells.
I look at Ares and he whispers. “That’s Matilda.”
We can hear her yelling more.
“Maybe we should have you test it out. Because obviously you’re an idiot and you’re doing something wrong.”
“I’ve done nothing wrong. We only have a little more of the Taipan venom. I don’t understand why it’s not working.”
“It’s not working because you’re a shitty researcher. I told Pamela you weren’t the right person to be the head of our lab. You need to force the Taipans to shift and get more venom out of them.”
“They haven’t recuperated from the last tests you did on them. If you force them to shift, they really will die this time.”
“Do you think I really care if they die? Get them in here and get them milked. Do your fucking job.”
Listening to Matilda talk to the researcher almost makes me feel bad for them. Almost. This is the researcher that forced us to shift and then milked our venom.
Oliver
Going back towards the apartment we were kept in isn’t easy. All I can think about is my parents and the twins. As we get closer, I start to smell a familiar scent. But it can’t be…
I watch Eros kick open the apartment door and what I see brings me to my knees.
“Mom? Dad? H-how?”
Before I can move, my parents and the twins are holding me. I feel sick that we left them.
“I’m so sorry we left you.” I sob.
“We’re glad you got out. Don’t ever be sorry for saving yourself.” My mom says as she hugs me tighter.
“I hate to do this. But we need to get out of here. You can talk about this outside.” Eros says to us.
My head is swimming as I look at my parents and the twins. I know for a fact none of them had a pulse. We never would’ve left them if we had any idea they were alive.
“We’ll explain everything, I promise.” My mom says as she hugs me again.
“Do you know if there’s any other shifters here?” Giacomo asks.
“No. Not that we’ve seen. It’s just our family.” My dad answers.
We make our way out of the facility, when we get outside and back to the cars, Giacomo gets on the coms to let the others know that we’re out and they need to grab Matilda and Paul.
“We’re listening to Matilda yell at her head researcher.” We hear Ares say on the coms.
“We checked the other two apartments and they’re empty. But we have eyes on Paul and another researcher.” Eros says.
“Grab all of them and bring them out. The loop is going to end soon and I don’t want any of us on their feed. We don’t know if the feed is being sent somewhere else.” Zeus says.
We get the cars ready to secure the ones we’re taking with us. I want to talk to my parents, but I don’t want to do it without Seraphina and Archer.
“Please tell me you’re all okay.” My mom says to me.
“We are. There’s so much to tell you. But I still don’t understand what happened. I checked all of you more than once…We only escaped because we thought they were killing us on purpose.”
My dad holds me tight. “You did the right thing. Where’s Phee and Archer?”
“They’re inside, we each had a section of the facility to take care of. I didn’t want Phee or Archer to have to deal with the memories. So I volunteered to do it. Phee has the research area and Archer has the other side of the facility. There’s two more apartments there.”
“Mom? Dad?” We hear Seraphina say.
I watch my parents and the twins run to her and grab her. I can hear all of them sobbing. Then I see Archer coming out. Before he gets to us, he drops to his knees. I can see the tears running down his face. We all go over to him and our parents hug him too.
I see five people being brought out in handcuffs. One of the women is yelling and screaming at Ares as he pushes her in front of him.
“Let’s get all of you back to the hotel so you can talk.” Enea says to us. “Don’t worry about them. We need to make arrangements to get them back to Lake Renegade.”
We all get into one of the cars and Sebastiano drives us back to the hotel.